Darryl Hickman, who worked with top directors as a child actor in the 1940s, shifted to television roles in the ’50s, and succeeded Robert Morse as the star of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” in the early ’60s, died on May 22 at his home in Montecito, Calif. He was 92.
His wife, Lynda (Farmer) Hickman, confirmed the death.
Mr. Hickman viewed himself as a character actor, never a star, during his childhood in Hollywood.
“I was happy doing what I did,” he said on a panel discussion moderated by Robert Osborne on TCM in 2006 with three former child actors, Dickie Moore, Jane Withers and Margaret O’Brien, all of whom he acknowledged had been stars, unlike himself. “I knew I wasn’t in their category.”
In 1940, when he was 8, he beat out dozens of other actors for the part of Winfield Joad, a brother of Tom Joad (played by Henry Fonda), in “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Ford’s adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel about an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family of tenant farmers who join a fraught journey to California.
Mr. Hickman recalled being on a darkened set watching Mr. Fonda shoot his farewell scene with Jane Darwell, who played Ma Joad, in which he tells her, “Wherever you can look — wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.”
“I knew I was watching great acting,” Mr. Hickman said in an online interview. “It was so simple and so real and so honest and so truthful and not acted at all.”
Mr. Hickman was a prolific actor during the 1940s. When he played a thief in Norman Taurog’s “Men of Boys Town” (1941) — the sequel to “Boys Town,” in which Mr. Tracy reprised his role as Father Flanagan, the creator of a sanctuary for boys — The Evening News of Harrisburg, Pa., called him the “child ‘find’ of the year.”
In 1943, he played a slow-witted boy in “The Human Comedy.” Two years later, he played the young Eddie Rickenbacker in “Captain Eddie,” about the World War I fighter pilot; the young Ira Gershwin in “Rhapsody in Blue”; and a disabled youngster who drowns in a lake while his heartless sister-in-law (Gene Tierney) watches in “Leave Her to Heaven.”
Although he wasn’t in “National Velvet” (1944), Mr. Hickman was friendly with its star, Elizabeth Taylor, whose character rides a horse to victory in a steeplechase race in England. He helped her clean the horses’ stables and played football with her.
“We would scrimmage on the grass in front of the studio school,” he said on the TCM program. “She could tackle better than the boys.”
Darryl Gerard Hickman was born on July 28, 1931, in Los Angeles. His father, Milton, was an insurance agent, and his mother, Louise (Ostertag) Hickman, managed the home. He got into show business at 3 when his father gave the Meglin Professional Children’s School an insurance policy in exchange for a spot there for his son.
One of his first roles was in “If I Were King” (1938), in which he had a single line, “Alms for the poor,” delivered to the film’s star, Ronald Colman. In 1939, he sang and danced in “The Star Maker,” starring Bing Crosby, whose brother Everett was then Mr. Hickman’s agent.
His busy years as a child actor turned into some disillusionment as he moved into adulthood. He spent a brief time in a monastery in the early 1950s, then earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Loyola University (now Loyola Marymount University) in Los Angeles in 1954. But he didn’t lose much acting time, going on to work mostly in television; he had roles on “Perry Mason,” “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” “The Untouchables” and “Rawhide,” and on anthology series like “The United States Steel Hour.”
His younger brother, Dwayne, was the star of the sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” from 1959 to 1963. Mr. Hickman played his older brother, Davey, on three episodes in the first season.
By then, Mr. Hickman said, he was running out of gas as a screen actor and was looking for new opportunities. He began to write scripts for TV series, including “Hawaiian Eye” and “The Loretta Young Show.” He performed onstage in summer stock, which led to his starring in “How to Succeed” for about a year as J. Pierrepont Finch, a window washer who climbs the corporate ladder.
In the early 1970s, he became an associate producer of the CBS soap opera “Love of Life.” He was later promoted to increasingly important jobs at the network, including oversight of its daytime programming.
He left in late 1976 to be a producer on “A Year at the Top,” a sitcom about two rock musicians (Paul Shaffer and Greg Evigan) who sell their soul to the devil’s son. Although its executive producer was the accomplished television comedy hitmaker Norman Lear, it had only a short run in the summer of 1977.
Mr. Hickman continued to act, sporadically, in movies and on TV into the 1990s.
But in the 1970s he also began to coach actors, and he went on to teach acting workshops for about 30 years. He also wrote the book “The Unconscious Actor: Out of Control, in Full Command” (2007).
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son, Damien. Another son, Justin, died in 1985. His brother died in 2022. His marriage to the actress Pamela Lincoln ended in divorce.
Mr. Hickman didn’t idealize his experience as a child actor. He said he had a great time, but he admitted that it had stunted his education and led him into years of therapy as an adult.
“When I was in my 30s,” he said on the TCM panel in 2006, “I said, to my mother, ‘How come I was out at the studio making movies when I was 3½ years old?’ She said, ‘It was something you always wanted to do.’ I laughed. She meant it.”
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